


Five Times Bane Rejected a Suitor (+1)

by pagination



Series: Things Fall Apart [1]
Category: Batman (Movies - Nolan), Dark Knight Rises (2012), RED (2010), Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011)
Genre: Crossover, Gen, Minor Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-30
Updated: 2012-08-30
Packaged: 2017-11-13 04:57:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,353
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/499742
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pagination/pseuds/pagination
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Done for a tdkr-kink prompt. 5 times someone tried to woo Bane and failed miserably +1 time when Talia stepped in and told them to "f*** off, he's mine."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Five Times Bane Rejected a Suitor (+1)

**Author's Note:**

> Crossovers are entirely my own doing. Takes place in the same reality as Where There's Life, if somewhat before.

 

 _1._  

 

The man’s name is Zafer, and he serves in the Temple of the League of Shadows.

He is strong, as mountains are strong, and ancient trees are strong. His roots reach into the bowels of the earth. In the exercises that train the bodies of the League of Shadows, he is like the march of the seasons:  insurmountable, impervious. In the disciplines that train their minds, he is like a wall of diamond, transparent and impenetrable.

When the League’s chemists are done with Talia’s protector from the pit, when their clever crafters have made him the first of the masks that will be his future face, Zafer stands at Ra’s al Ghul’s side to watch as they raise him from his bed. The mask is crude and blank, not yet the elegant, snarling bristle of fangs that will evolve in years to come, but it serves well enough to pump poison into the man’s skin and hide the scars that crease his face.

Beyond it, around it, the protector is beautiful. Zafer sees him for the first time, and covets.

“What is his name?” asks Ra’s, watching with distant eyes as his daughter cradles the man’s hand in hers.

“We did not have names in the pit,” she says.

“Then what was it before?” 

The protector’s head lifts; his eyes are blue and clear of pain, lucid for the first time since he was brought to the temple. They meet those of Ra’s. Their color is his; their fire is Talia’s.

“I had one once, but that man died in the pit,” the protector says. His voice is the warning growl of starving wolves, the moan of killing winds across the glaciers. Zafer’s belly shivers with desire, hearing it. “This one will be Bane.”

It is effrontery, to choose such a name. Worn by a lesser man, it might have inspired amusement, or mockery. Ra’s does not smile. “Bane,” he says, seeing something in the protector’s face that makes him turn away. “So be it.”

Zafer watches from a distance as Bane recovers his strength, guided through the temple’s corridors by the slim, straight-backed silence of the woman-child. Bane is still weak from the darkness and the journey, and the quick-fingered craftsmen are not yet pleased with their mechanisms for his pain. They are artists as well as engineers. The mask changes shape over the course of weeks, fluid, gradually transforming from the blankness of anonymity to the face that should belong to such a man.

Zafer does not know love as others know it. His is the unquestioning appetite of the sea, as instinctive as that of any animal that goes into season and recognizes its mate. When Bane is able to take his place on the training grounds, he decides the man is strong enough for his purposes. He stops Bane in the halls of the temple, blocking his path as the protector goes from one place to another, Talia at his side.

“I desire you,” Zafer says to him, ignoring her. “Come to my bed.”

Bane studies him, as Talia studies him, with calculating eyes that recognize power. “No,” he says.

It is not the custom in the League for one to refuse Zafer, when he has chosen to honor someone. He is surprised at a thing never before experienced, then curious. “Are you not a lover of men?” 

“I am a lover of no one,” Bane says. 

“Then come, and you will learn beneath me.”

“I choose not.”

Zafer raises his eyebrows, seeing the small crease of a smile on Talia’s lips. “Is this your choice? Or hers?”

“I rule my body.”

“Your mask says otherwise,” Zafer says, without malice.

Bane does not answer, though the woman-child’s eyes hiss and snap with a snake’s cold spite.

The laws of the League are few, but absolute. Bane is still weak, and untutored; Zafer could easily force him to his bed, but death in exchange for a few hours’ pleasure is not a profitable trade. Ra’s does not tolerate treachery amongst brothers.

Zafer considers the matter, then shrugs. There is more than one way to skin a man. “So, then,” he says. “I will put my mark on you in other ways.”

“I will not share your bed,” Bane says.

“I will wait,” Zafer says. “Come to the nightingale floors. I will teach you what you need to know.”

“What things?”

“How to fight. How to kill. How to breathe. How to die. How to become alum in the heart. Things you need to know if you wish to become your name.”

The protector’s blue eyes gleam, as Talia’s eyes do. They are mirrors of each other, Zafer thinks, and is briefly touched by regret; a rare, foreign emotion for one such as him. 

“I will come,” Bane says.

“ _We_ will come,” Talia says, and slides her hand into her protector’s.

Bane struggles under him on the training grounds. His skin grows bright with sweat and dark with bruises; his breath comes raggedly at Zafer’s hands, his heartbeat quickens. He grows strong, while Talia watches with her chill, fierce eyes. But he does not come to Zafer’s bed. 

 

_2._

 

The little brother is lean and fair, and shines like a knife in the dark. Talia notices him first, but says nothing to Bane. There is no need: what she sees, he sees, his attention drawn by the fact of hers. They watch together as he eels through training, deceptively fragile but whipcord strong. His eyes are guarded; his tongue, clever. He lies to his brothers with his body, making it pliant and giving, while the will and mind that steer it stay concealed, untouchable.

His name is Barsad, Talia learns.

“His heart does not belong yet to Ra’s,” she says into Bane’s ear, her hand warm on his shoulder. 

“ _So, then_ ,” says Bane, and his eyes crinkle into a smile. This latest manifestation of his mask does strange things to his voice, makes it hollow and inhuman; erases the man he was and replaces it with the horror he will be. He has told the engineers to let the voice modulations stand, and they have smiled their prim, pleated smiles with the satisfaction of artisans who know their craft.

They take Barsad with them, one of a dozen men on a mission for Ra’s. Bane has his own followers now among the League, but he does not take them. Ra’s reach is uncertain, but he is no fool, to ignore a blazing trail when it is left out for him. Talia’s presence is enough to guard Bane’s back. If its ribbons of scars gain more brethren, they will not be through her.

Two days into Basra, Barsad slips away, disappearing into the alleys of the shuttered city. When the man returns, carrying an ear still warm from the head it was detached from, Bane listens to his explanation before backhanding him across the face. He does not use his full strength, but Barsad is smaller, slighter than him; he flies across the house they have claimed for their own, and lands bloodied against the wall.

“ _Little brother_ ,” Bane says, squatting down beside him to study the bright, flashing eyes. “ _One day you will know my mind as though we were knit from the same flesh. Your hand will be my hand, and your heart will be my heart. But until that day, do not presume.”_

He touches Barsad’s split lip with his thumb, spreading blood across the chapped skin. The pink tongue flicks out involuntarily, tasting copper and the acid of Bane’s skin before it retreats.

When Bane rises, he turns his back to Barsad, letting the assassin rise alone. Talia watches from her chair, intent, and a smile touches her eyes as the smaller man leaves.

“Good,” she says. “He will come to you.”

 _“Eventually,”_ Bane says. _“We will see.”_

For the next two days he ignores Barsad, receiving for this restraint quick, furtive glances from the other man. 

The mission is a delicate one. Bane covers his head and mask with the _keffiyeh_ , remaining silent while Talia plants insidious, subtle barbs in the minds of diplomats and generals. Afterwards, they adjust their plans, determine their next target together, determine how close they are to their goal. Barsad listens and watches them with wary eyes, always silent, always thinking. He accompanies them on their visits to embassies and hotels and restaurants, sometimes dressed in a military uniform claimed by one nation or another, sometimes in the neat suit of a businessman. 

“What happened to your face, dude?” Bane hears an American soldier ask Barsad once, a blond-haired, friendly boy whose eyes still hold the innocence of a child.

“I mistook a lion for a jackal,” says Barsad. 

On the third day, Bane takes Barsad with him to kill a man. To kill the one man, they must first kill ten others. They are, most of them, easy to overcome, but three prove to be Mossad: almost a challenge. One almost kills Barsad. Bane rips him off the smaller man and tosses him like a pebble through the open window. When he turns to raise his eyebrow at his little brother, he sees no fear in Barsad’s eyes.

When they find their target at last, Bane kills him with his bare hands, snapping his neck like a twig. Barsad puts his knife in the throat of his quietly resigned mistress, because there can be no witnesses.

After they return, Barsad labors quietly in the outer yard, busying himself under the deepening cloak of night. He comes to Bane when he is done, his eyes downcast, his hands empty. 

“I have drawn you a bath,” he says. “If you wish it, to clean the blood from your skin.”

Talia, crouched cat-like over her plans on the floor, curls her mouth. Her eyes meet Bane’s, unseen by Barsad.

“ _Thank you, my friend_ ,” Bane says.

It is a luxury he has not had since they left the high fortress of the temple. He sinks into the high-walled wooden tub naked, his eyes half-lidded, and pretends at ease while Barsad brings freshly heated water in a kettle to the bath.

When a warm, wet cloth brushes cautiously across his shoulder, Bane smiles behind the mask.

Barsad is practiced and intent, his hands strong on Bane’s muscles. They knead languor into them, lingering over the stain of bruises, tracing across scars that cord the skin. The ache is pleasurable, as is the tension, the danger, the deceit of trust that strips Bane naked and lets another -- not Talia -- touch him so. His body wakes at the heady risk of it, stiffening in the clear water.

He watches, though his eyes slide almost closed. Waits. When Barsad’s clever fingers slide down his stomach, greatly daring, and close around his shaft, Bane’s hand is there as well, trapping his wrist.

Barsad stills, his fingers closed in expectation.

 _“No_ ,” Bane says gently, and squeezes.

Barsad hisses by Bane’s ear; his hand opens under the patient pressure. Bane turns his head to look into the watchful eyes so near his own, and reads frustration.

“I displease you,” Barsad says. 

“ _No.”_

“Then you want a woman.”

“ _No._ ”

Barsad’s gaze drops to Bane’s body below the water, where he rests, still erect. “You do not wish me to serve you.”

_“I do.”_

“Then I do not understand.”

__

_“This is not the service I want from you, little brother,”_ Bane says, and slides wet fingers across the other man’s cheek, leaving glimmering trails across his skin. Barsad shivers, his tongue flicking out nervously across his lips. _“I want your heart. Your mind. When both are mine, then I will take your body, as a gift.”_

“I give you my body now,” Barsad says, his pupils dilating in uncertainty as Bane closes his hand around his throat, thumb pressing against the quickening pulse. “You may use it as you wish.”

 _“Too easily given.”_ He rises to stand in the bath, shedding water in a sibilant curtain as he does. Barsad rises with him, dragged to his feet by Bane’s hand around his neck. Bane forces up his chin to bare his throat, his other arm wrapping around the lean body to draw him close, to press him against the line of his. “ _You hide away that which is most precious, and seek to distract me with what is not.”_

He can feel the the leap of Barsad’s arousal against his leg, woken to life by the same sudden fear that is paling in his face. Satisfaction purrs in Bane’s mind at the sight; he knows his way now. Barsad has no fear of death or pain. 

“No,” Barsad says hoarsely, his hands closing around Bane’s wrist. 

 _“Yes,”_ says Bane. _“I am no fool, little brother. I know your tricks. I have seen you play them with the old men at the temple. But I am not to be so easily blinded. Nor so easily led.”_

“I would not!” 

_“You would. I forgive you. You do not know me.”_

“You are B-Bane,” Barsad gasps as his throat is squeezed; he is hard, digging into Bane’s thigh.

__

_“And I claim you,”_ Bane says tenderly, lifting the smaller man easily until he strains to balance on his toes. _“Listen well to my words, little brother. What you have offered me is dross. I say it is not enough. In time, you will give me the entirety of you, body and soul, or I will rip you open and claim your heart. You will be the shield on my arm, and the sword in my hand. When I light the fire that burns down the world, you will be the kindling that feeds the flames. You may resist me if you wish; but in the end, I will take you all the same.”_

Barsad’s eyes blaze with anger and terror, but it is the hunger that makes them near black, the need that makes them wide. Bane’s muscles bunch; he lifts, then tosses. Then he sinks back down into the bath, aware but not looking at Barsad sprawled wet and gasping on the floor. The water has cooled, but it is still pleasant on his skin; he stretches his arms long along the edges of the tub, closes his eyes, and settles his head back against the wood.

He hears rather than sees Barsad pull himself up off the floor, and knows (though he is silent) when he leaves the room.

In patience, he waits. The water grows cooler still.

The quiet step that finally enters is deliberately audible, a courtesy from his Talia, who can be as subtle as a breath when she walks across the nightingale floor. He smiles. Though the mask hides it, she does not need to see it to know that he does.

 _“He will be our man,_ ” Bane says in answer to her unspoken question, as slim arms twine around his neck from behind, strong and loving. _“Sooner than he thinks.”_

 

 

 

 

_3._

 

“I don’t want to be crass about this,” says the man, “but we’re running out of time. Let’s put it this way. If you don’t come over to my side, I’ll put a bullet in your brain.”

The man is British, _call me Ricki_ , and insouciant with a shallow charm that is as bright as lacquer, if rather less brittle. His dress is Western shab, consisting of a suit and open-collared shirt that both sag limply as though worn out by the heat that paints his face with sweat. His eyes are a ferret’s, sharp and watchful, canny. He is SIS, Secret Intelligence Service, _or_ _you can think MI6 if it makes you feel old school cool. Rather prefer it myself, darling_. 

It has been, Bane thinks, almost four days of interrogation. He is getting bored. 

“I want to be reasonable about this,” Ricki says, lighting yet another cigarette from the pack on the table between them. _Rym_ , the pack says. Algerian. “I don’t _want_ to cause problems for you. I’d rather us be friends.”

 _“An unlikely outcome,”_ Bane says. The mechanism of his mask has been dismantled and reconstructed several times since the British captured him; the voice modulations are breathier than they were. They make him sound even weaker than he is after several days of torture, a fiction that Ricki is not foolish enough to believe. 

“I don’t know about that. I think I’m pretty appealing.” 

 _“You are a decadent product of a corrupt people,”_ Bane says kindly, because Ricki seems to expect such remarks from him.

“But still _appealing_.”

Bane says nothing. Ricki’s men have manacled him to a steel-framed chair that barely contains his bulk. It is a solid thing, but not impossible to break. He has not chosen to test it yet. The man with Ricki is as large as Bane, black and scarred, and heavily armed. His fists are the ones that have drawn most of his blood, broken his ribs, and snapped two of his fingers. He is a careful craftsman in pain -- _you don’t mind Sufi, do you? He’s a traditionalist_ \-- if not as prone to conversation as Ricki.The Englishman favors less primal tools, some of them involving electricity.

Sufi looks at Bane now, dark eyes gleaming with anticipation, his knuckles crackling. 

The house in which he is being held is somewhere near a village, near enough that he can hear the occasional passage of livestock and the call for prayer through the crumbling walls. It is a place too small for the formality of a recorded _muezzin,_ but near enough to a larger urban center (or the road to one) that he can hear the occasional traffic of heavy vehicles rattling by. 

They are near enough to a center of Western power that Ricki does not feel more than obligatory concern at being isolated in a relatively remote location. The number of guards he has seen attests to that, almost all of them native barring a couple of pale-faced British soldiers, who stand out glaringly against their backdrop. 

“Here’s the thing,” Ricki says confidingly, leaned against the wall. “This is a limited time offer, and your window of opportunity is closing.”

_“Your offer is not worth considering.”_

“Compared to the alternatives, I’d rethink that if I were you.”

There is a knock from outside. Ricki glances over at his massive guard, and jerks his head towards the sound. The guard obediently steps outside to investigate, closing the heavy wooden door behind him. 

Now it is only the two of them. Bane’s eyes slide half-closed again. 

__

“We’re retrieving your people right now,” Ricki says, his deceptively lazy gaze intent on his face. “In fact, we’ve already picked up your woman. She’s not a talkative one normally, is she? She changed her mind. It’s not her fault. Don’t blame her.” He reaches into his suit and pulls out a photograph, which he inspects before turning it to show Bane. Talia’s dark, rippling hair. Talia’s cool, fierce eyes. Ropes. Bruises. Blood.

“Wouldn’t have thought if of you,” Ricki confides, satisfied with the rigidity of Bane’s silence. He tosses the photograph to the table, where it skids wildly until coming up short against his lighter. “A man with a reputation like yours, I would’ve thought you’d be smarter than be talkative after a fuck. At the very least, that you’d make sure you cut off the loose ends after the fact. I suppose I shouldn’t criticize. It worked out in my favor. Everybody’s got a weakness.”

_“You have not yet begun to learn my weaknesses, my friend.”_

“In about ten minutes, it won’t matter. I’m not talking just to hear my own voice. You might consider listening, darling. I’m offering you a once in a lifetime opportunity. And I do mean that literally.”

_“I have lived more than one life already. You would be surprised at how often such opportunities arise.”_

Ricki’s mouth twitches, tightening into an artificial smile. “My superiors think you should just be put down,” he says idly, shifting. The Englishman leans against the wall, contemplating him, the cigarette dangled between his fore and middle fingers. “I’d prefer not to. I think you’d be a valuable asset. And what’s not to love about this deal? You get paid to do the jobs you’ll do anyway, and you get an extra commission from the Union Jack on the side.”

Bane lifts a politely inquiring eyebrow. _“You would have me betray my cause?”_

“Oh, please. Don’t recycle that trite horseshit to me. Your _cause_.” Derision rakes across the word. “You can trot out that fiction for your men, if that’s what keeps them loyal. Whatever floats their boat. But _you_ \--” Ricki steps forward to plant his hands on the table, face close to Bane’s in a searching study of his eyes. “ _You’re_ no jihadist. You don’t believe in the GIA bullshit any more than I do in queen and country.”

 _“Patriotic words_.”

“ _Fuck_ patriotism. Idealism’s fine for little kids and people who don’t have anything left to lose. You and me, we know better than that. You’re in it for profit. I’m in it for other reasons.” Bright blue eyes smile humorlessly at Bane. “You and me, we’re men with a unique skill set. That makes us valuable.” 

Ricki reaches up to the mask while Bane regards him, unblinking. Delicate, precise fingers detach one of the venom-feeding tubes. Then another. After a moment, a third. It is the limit, they have discovered together, beyond which Bane can no longer process words spoken to him. 

“Last chance,” Ricki says. His fingers trail across Bane’s brows, tracing around the hollow of his eye. “That knock on the door was probably a message saying all of your people were collected. Once that’s done, my superiors won’t want me to keep you alive anymore. You’re either with us, or ... not.”

 _“You speak too much,”_ Bane says, through the tingling, numbing precursor to agony. His eyelids flutter around it; the outside world begins to recede. Already the pain hovers like a storm over the horizon, its first, eager webs of lightning searching for flesh to score and incinerate.

Ricki sighs, straightening. He does not repair the mask. Behind him, the door opens; he turns as a slim figure enters, its head swathed in a _keffiyeh_. Sufi enters as well, turning to fit through the door. 

“Bloody hell,” Bane hears Ricki say through a distance. His vision is beginning to blur; the hazy outline of the Englishman accepts the piece of paper handed to him by the lad and opens it for a hasty scan. “I’m not ready yet.”

The boy shrugs, and glances curiously over at Bane. Bane looks back through a long, black tunnel. Cool, fierce eyes regard him from beneath the headcloth. 

“I’m sorry to have to do this,” Ricki says, nodding to his massive associate. Sufi moves stolidly behind Bane. The warm, muffling cloak of a bag slides over his head from behind; it stinks of blood and stale sweat, and the mustier stench of goats. “But you know how it is. I told you it was a time-sensitive opportunity. Fucking pity. It would’ve been nice working together.”

 _“Unlikely.”_ The cool metal of a gun’s barrel presses hard against the back of Bane’s head.

“Maybe not,” Ricki says regretfully, “but it would’ve been less of a waste of talent.”

 _“Indeed,”_ Bane says, as stabbing, singing pain sinks its fangs into his face. _“You might have been useful to me.”_

The pressure of the gun disappears; he hears a startled curse. Bane flexes, straining for a moment against the bite of handcuffs and the resistance of the chair’s solid construction before he finds the weakest angle and pulls with all his might. His broken ribs creak, groaning with pain. Metal chains snap, freeing his arms from their bind to the seat’s arms.

He drags off the hood with a hand. 

The room is a frozen tableau, hazy through the rising madness of agony and receding reality. People are blurred outlines of shadows, blobs of darkness against the backdrop of searing white. The smallest of them -- the youth who entered with the message -- ghosts across his vision to stop at Bane’s side; he feels slim, clever fingers move quickly across the mask. 

Venom hisses back into his skin; he hisses likewise as pain retreats, pushed back by the sweet chill of the drug. His eyes clear. His breathing steadies.

Bane stands.

Ricki is a shabby, hot-eyed line against the wall, his hand frozen on the butt of the gun holstered under his jacket. The Englishman’s habitual insouciance is gone, stripped away to leave behind it the hard, ugly lines of a killer. Satisfaction warms Bane at the sight, even through the lancets of pain from broken bones and injury. He finds the man’s true face more attractive than the other. 

Beside the shattered chair, Sufi stands like a mountain, immovable, implacable, his gun steady on the Englishman. 

 _“It seems our conversations are at an end,”_ Bane says to Ricki, ironic.

“Apparently,” Ricki says, likewise. His hand eases away from the gun as he straightens, the murder in his eyes erased by the careful restoration of his earlier, facile manner. “How long has he been one of your men? Or did you get to him while we had you?”

“I am of the League of Shadows,” rumbles Sufi. “I am Bane’s.”

Ricki pales. “League of-- I _knew_ you weren’t GIA. Fuck. _Fuck_. Five _years_. We vetted the _shit_ out of you.”

Sufi shrugs without apology. 

“My men outside?”

“Dead,” Sufi says.

Ricki nods back, unsurprised, resignation replacing the quick flash of anger in his face. His cigarette was lost during the short flurry. He plucks a new one out of the box on the table now, and lights it with a deliberate hand. “You realize this means your fucking cow will be dead within the hour,” he tells Bane in a jab of spite, taking a long drag. 

Bane picks up the picture from the table. Talia’s hair. Talia’s eyes. Not Talia’s face. _“Our little sister will die a martyr’s death,”_ he says to the Englishman, and lays it back down, turning it to face the Englishman. _“We will honor her sacrifice.”_

Ricki’s eyes darken as he stares at Bane, then turns his gaze down to the photograph and then to the slim figure in the _keffiyeh_. Realization is a slow, sick gleam in his face, though not unattended by self-mockery. He is brave, this one. “ _I_ was the fish on the line,” he says slowly.

 _“And I thank you for your service,”_ Bane says. His eyes smile. _“You have advanced the cause.”_

The agent pauses. Bane can see him steeling himself. “How many?” he asks.

“Seven,” Talia says, her voice cadenced and beautiful in the spartan room.

Ricki swallows convulsively. “Seven,” he says hoarsely.

“Including the one in the Syrian embassy.” Talia inclines her head. “Thank you.”

The Englishman closes his eyes for a second, then opens them again. “I was right about you,” he says conversationally to Bane. “You really would have been an asset worth recruiting.”

Bane tilts his head, amused again. Sufi hands him his other gun. He raises his arm to inspect Ricki’s forehead down the line of its sights. _“You intend it as a compliment. I accept it as such._ ”

“Don’t suppose you’d reconsider switching sides?”

_“No.”_

“Well,” Ricki says with admirable composure, stubbing his cigarette out on the table with fingers that shake only a little bit. “Can’t blame a bloke for trying.”

 _“Not at all,”_ Bane says politely.

Then he kills him.

 

_4._

 

The house is graceful and ancient, its beams charred by past fires or the smoke of a hundred thousand meals in the pit that serves as the hearth. It is cold, almost in the way that the temple is cold; not with the wind that wails outside, kept out by wood and frail glass and paper, but by the very nature of its construction, which sways like a willow with the moody earth and sacrifices comfort for endurance.

There is a lesson in that. 

Bane hurts.

The woman who tends to him is smaller than Talia, but almost as silent. They do not share a complete language, though she speaks to him in short phrases: kindly, gently, in cadences he recognizes without knowing their meaning. He is in Japan, or somewhere near its coast.

They communicate through mime, the broken phrases he learned from the teachers at the temple, and the few Chinese characters he knows. _Pain_ , he knows. _Food_. _Water. Thing._ _Peace. War._

 _Mountain_ , she writes back with her finger on the floor, and smiles with her eyes. To her, he must seem so. He agrees with his own simple sketch.

 _Mountain_.

He has a broken leg, set and wrapped and splinted; two large holes in his shoulder and hip; three fractured ribs; cuts and bruises and scrapes elsewhere. When he returns to the Philippines, he will kill the man who packed his parachute, slowly. If it proves to be a case of simple incompetence, then the lesson will be clear to the others; if it proves to be a case of malice, other men will die, eventually.

First, though, he must heal. And he must wonder, dispassionately, how Talia and the men assigned to her fare on this mission without him. Dae-Hyun and Barsad are with her as guides and protectors; they will die before they let Talia fall. The rest are Ra’s al Ghul’s though, and his feelings towards his daughter are less certain.

They will return for him, when they are done. Or he will heal, and burn down the city that saw her death. It is a simple equation. In the meantime, he rests on the woman’s hard _ofuton_ , covered in the thick, patched blankets that are heavier than the mat, eats simple meals of rice, _miso_ , fish and vegetables, and smells sea air and the sweetness of grass _tatami_ mats.

Her family name, he learns, is Oyama: great mountain. Her given name is Sachiko: child of happiness. He calls her Oyama- _san_ , and is rewarded by her smile. What her tongue does to his name is quaint, and complicated; it becomes gentler, kinder, the property of an altogether different man. _Bai-nu_. _Bainu-san._

Her daughter’s name is Aiko -- child of love -- and she is Talia reborn.

Not the Talia of today, but Talia at the age she was when he first claimed her, ripping her from the greedy hands of men who would have used and destroyed her. Not, in truth, entirely the same: younger, kinder, more curious, less fierce. Eyes as comfortable with the light as they are with the dark, unpracticed in duplicity, almost as knowing. They are alike in the way pleasure and pain are, or birth and death. 

He wakes that first day to find the child seated by his side on the floor, legs folded under her, hands resting like nesting birds in her lap. For a moment he is disconcerted, thinking himself back in the pit, though she has hair like ink down her shoulder, and Talia’s head was always shaved to stave off lice and the reminder of her sex.

It is how he realizes the severity of his injuries, that he did not wake at her entrance. She regards him with frank interest.

 _“Aoi,”_ she says. 

“ _Your parents are poor caretakers,”_ Bane says with contempt. _“Only a fool leaves a sheep to watch a wolf.”_

 _“Ojisan, kowaaaai,”_ she says, sounding pleased. _“Kaasanwo yobimashou, ne?”_ And then, unexpectedly, falters into a careful, “Pain, have?”

 _“No,”_ Bane says, and watches her eyes narrow in a swift smile. She is a smiling child, like her mother is a smiling woman. 

 _“Usotsuki,”_ she says in a teasing voice, and then she flits away. 

He learns later that her father is dead. That they are isolated in this small house, removed from civilization. That they are all alone, save for him.

They do not fear him, though they should. It seems to him at first that they are simple-minded, too innocent to understand danger, like the sheep he first thought them. Their naivete offends him. For a span of days he thinks about teaching them the meaning of fear, and does not attempt to rein in his quiet menace. They take no notice. Over time his irritation fades, and he realizes that their composure is something different. Not complacency, but fatalism without apathy; a sibling of that quality his ninja teachers at the temple carried as well. 

He is not inclined to be contemptuous of it, knowing better than most the strength that comes from such perfect resignation.

The mission that Talia and his men have ventured on will be a long one. They will not return for him for weeks. He spends his time learning the language -- he has always been quick with tongues -- and reclaiming his body from the insult of injury.

Aiko watches him exercise what he can and copies him, tiny and ridiculous in her mimicry. He does not laugh. Instead, he teaches, molding her slender limbs into the proper shapes with nostalgia bittersweet on his tongue. She learns quickly, like Talia did, and with as much discipline, though with less ferocious intent. It is occupation of a sort for him, and he welcomes it. His temper at enforced confinement is uncertain; this is not like the peace of the temple, where there is always physical activity to give him outlet. He has always been a poor patient.

Mother and daughter watch him with interest one day as he vents his frustration in his room, battering solid wooden beams with his fists until skin splits and splinters fly. When he picks up a delicate porcelain doll to smash it through the wall, Sachiko is there to place a gently restraining hand on his arm.

He considers killing her for a long moment; imagines how it would feel to rip the life from her slowly, satisfying the beast of frustration that writhes, frenzied, under his skin. Does not act on the impulse, obscurely restrained by Aiko’s sharp, curious eyes.

Outside, in the small yard that has been wrestled out of the inhospitable earth and rocks, she shows him a pile of wood and gives him a small hand axe. It is a formidable pile, and he tackles it with a savage will. It lasts him three days; after that, he moves boulders to improve the retaining wall built up in back against the possibility of landslides. He makes an unlikely Samaritan. The image of it entertains him. The unlikeliest things always have.

Aiko trails him, watching him work, teaching him the language with unexpected patience. Her company is not a hardship. She is not overly talkative; her remarks are intelligent for her age, and perceptive. He reciprocates with carefully culled provocation, challenging her mind.

 _“Do you kill people?”_ she asks one day.

 _“Yes,”_ he says.

__

She accepts this without fuss. _“Only the warui people?”_ The thread of conversation falters while they determine that the word means ‘evil.’ Or perhaps ‘bad.’ Or perhaps, ‘wrong.’

 _“No,”_ he says. _“I kill those I want to kill.”_

_“Why not only the bad people?”_

_“How do I know which are bad?”_

_“Bad people do bad things.”_

__

_“How do you know they are bad things?”_

She gives this serious thought. He is occupying himself with digging a new well. The silence is not unwelcome.

 _“Do you think mother is a good person?”_ Aiko asks at last.

He pauses to consider this. He does not have the vocabulary for ‘hopelessly naive’ or ‘catastrophically innocent.’ _“Yes,”_ he says, because it is the easiest thing to say.

Aiko nods, satisfied. _“Then a bad thing is a thing that mother would not do.”_  

He is amused by this simple philosophy. 

In the third week, he realizes that she is courting him.

 _“Mother,”_ Aiko says with apparent disinterest, _“she is pretty, ne?”_  

It is true that Sachiko is, in her way; her face and figure are both attractive, delicate in a fashion that Bane has always found appealing. But she is beautiful as well, tranquil with a sense of peace and dignity that is bone-deep. It is utterly alien to Bane, but he can appreciate beauty, even while he destroys it.

 _“She is your mother,”_ Bane says. 

 _“Mother needs more friends,”_ Aiko says. _“She is very alone.”_

Later, it is an artless, _“Mother says you are very beautiful.”_

Aiko is a poor liar. The woman Bane is coming to know would no more comment on his appearance than she would refuse her hospitality to an injured terrorist. Neither of them have ever commented on his mask, nor made him more conscious of its presence than he is amongst his brothers. 

He raises his brow at her in obvious skepticism. Aiko has the grace to look embarrassed. _“Shibui,”_ she amends. 

_“I do not know this word.”_

She frowns over it, looking puzzled, then disappears into the kitchen. When she returns, it is with an rough stone bowl in shades of black and brown and grey. It is hand-made, imperfect and lopsided; she puts it into his hands and says, hopefully, _“Shibui_.”

He is amused again. _“Ugly.”_

Aiko makes a chiding sound between her teeth. _“Shibui,”_ she says firmly. _“Not ugly. Beautiful. Not--”_ she points at her own eyes, then at Bane’s. _“You see.”_

It takes several days for him to. The bowl is left on the table in his room, and he picks it up from time to time to inspect it, academically intrigued by the puzzle of a concept that does not translate. Until one day, it does. Who knows what causes the epiphany: the roughness of the bowl under his fingertips when he turns it; the sudden smoothness where glaze trickles unevenly across its lip; some trick of light; some shift in his mind. He grasps the whole of the word, and discovers through it new understanding of other things, taught far away in the temple of Ra’s al Ghul. Perfection through imperfection. The harmony of empty spaces; the subtlety of simplicity.

A more unlikely word to describe him, he cannot imagine. 

Curious, he asks Sachiko, who is setting out the dozen or so little plates that she feels necessary for dinner. Each meal is an arrangement in beauty, energy wasted on triviality that he privately thinks would better be spent elsewhere. She treats everything she does with the same grave dedication to perfection.

 _“Aiko says--”_ Grammar is still complicated; the Japanese have a strange reticence when it comes to the word ‘you.’ He puts the bowl on the table, points at it, then points at himself while she looks inquiring. _“Shibui?”_

Understanding draws another smile out of Sachiko, though it comes with a faint blush. _“Shibui,”_ she agrees.

_“Why?”_

Sachiko considers him, then reaches out tentative, graceful fingers that stop just short of touching the mask. The hand flattens before Bane can trap it, palm facing him. _“Omote,”_ she says. Then she turns her hand over. _“Ura,”_ she says.

The words he recognizes from his training at the temple. _Omote_ , the outer side; _ura_ , the reverse. She half-turns her hand then, fingers slightly curved, and points to its side: the space between _omote_ and _ura_. _“Bainu-san,”_ she says, and smiles. _“Shibui. You understand?”_

__

_“Yes,”_ he says, and for once is not amused at all.

 _“Mother is very wise,”_ Aiko tells him later, drumming her feet against the car as she watches him replace its wheel. _“She is a good wife.”_

__

Bane almost chuckles at the ludicrousness of the idea, of the implied invitation from this ignorant, happy innocent. He thinks briefly about taking her mother to his bed, her bed that she has lent him, but it is only for a moment. He has no use for the pride or happiness of others, but even if he did not break Sachiko's tranquil dignity, he would still leave it damaged and scarred. And under its shade, this little one would grow.

He has no use for other people’s illusions either, but she is too closely knit with nostalgia for him to invite betrayal into her eyes.

 _“I belong to someone,”_ he tells the child, not unkindly. 

She tilts her head and looks disappointed, but unsurprised. _“Is she very beautiful?”_

__

_Deadly. Glorious. Incandescent. Lethal._ He does not have the words. _“Like the ocean,”_ he says.

 _“The ocean is very dangerous. It killed my father. It does not like to give things back.”_ She is occasionally a very literal-minded child. But perceptive, all the same.

 _“Yes,”_ he says. His Talia, who will devour continents if she can. _“It is always hungry.”_

__

They come for him two days later, a cloud of dust up the long, empty road that resolves into a small car. Inside are Talia and Dae-Hyun, dressed in the incongruous formality of corporate accountants. Sachiko welcomes them with unflustered hospitality, as though the entirety of her life was spent preparing for the moment they would appear at her door.

Dae-Hyun is fluent in the language. He exchanges formalities with her, smoothing their way in the intricate etiquette of the Japanese. Thanks. Demurals. Gratitude. Refusals. Protestations of imposition. Equal protestations of obligation. It is a soothing, ancient dance, and Bane is reminded of this people’s bloody history, and the unbending pride of a civilization that needed such restraints to survive.

 _“I will miss you,”_ Aiko confides, peering up at him from behind the car. Her gaze is drawn to Talia, who smiles demurely at Dae-Hyun’s shoulder. _“Is that her?”_

__

_“Yes,”_ he says.

 _“She is very beautiful,”_ Aiko says wistfully. _“Like the ocean.”_

__

When they leave, Sachiko and Aiko see them off, bowing formally beside the door to bid them farewell. “Do we kill them, Bane?” asks Dae-Hyun, looking back at the two slim figures, bent like willows in the stinging sea breeze.

It would be the prudent thing. The practical thing. Talia looks at Bane with upraised eyebrows, marking a hesitation no other would recognize as one; but she knows him. She is his outer face. His _omote._

__

“Leave her,” she says, saying what he can not. “It is better if they do not know that we came back this way. Bodies will cause more attention than a rumor about a vagrant who simply wandered away.”

Dae-Hyun could say that he could make it look like an accident, that he could make it look like they ran away with the man they have been caring for. There are any number of things that he could say -- but he is Bane’s man, and Talia’s man, so instead he bows his head, obedient once the decision is made.

“You grow tender-hearted, my friend,” Talia murmurs into Bane’s ear, as the car rattles down the unpaved road, away from the house and its graceful ghosts.

He raises a mocking eyebrow at her.

Talia slides her arm around his upper arm and rests her head on his shoulder. “Such things are not for us, beloved.”

 _Shibui,_ he thinks, and warms his fingers in her hair. _“We are enough as we are,”_ he says without regret.

 

_5._

 

“My God. You’re _gorgeous_. _Look_ at these muscles. I could bounce _pennies_ off your ass.”

The woman’s name, unlikely enough, is Bambi. She clings to Bane’s arm, tenacious as a limpet, a purring and drunken invitation of blond hair and blue eyes. Forty years younger, she might have been a trophy wife. Now, she is simply a very, very wealthy old woman, albeit one who retains traces of what must have been remarkable beauty. Dressed in a puffy white down jacket, make-up streaked and her short hair sticking on end, she leans into his side with obvious infatuation. He can feel the hard press of something digging into his hip.

He looks down at her, wondering idly whether he would need to use his entire hand to crush her trachea, or if he could do it with just thumb and forefinger. While he considers it, she detaches herself just long enough to slap him on the rear.

His eyebrows climb up.

“Ride ‘em, cowboy,” she says happily.

He does not kill her, but it is a close thing.

The chalet in St. Moritz is an elegant one, host in the ski seasons to celebrities and people of wealth and power. The library is sparsely populated, high-ceilinged and quiet; through wide plate glass windows, the black-lit glow of snow fields is pricked by the bodies still determinedly winding their way down the slopes, and the thatching of trees that border the run.

The woman on his arm is an inconvenience. Bane glances at Jean-Philippe, who looks more amused than inclined to help, even if he could; the Frenchman’s role in this does not permit him to occupy his hands any more than they are already.

The haze of drugged stupidity in her face is too thick to be penetrated by subtler means. Bane detaches her from his arm by means of simple leverage, dragging her hand by the wrist off his elbow, then pressing the flat of his thumb on the back of her hand between the metacarpals of her fourth and fifth fingers to twist it up. She folds neatly to the floor by his feet, hiccuping with astonishment.

 _“Be still,”_ he advises her. She seems inclined to obey, though perhaps only because the floor is covered with thick sheepskin rugs. 

“‘s warm,” she says, sprawling out on the thick white hides. “C’mon down here an’ make me a _woman_ , big boy.”

The meeting is in a private study off the side of the library, its doors already guarded by two men in suits. Bane allows them to pat him down, as Jean-Philippe does; both their guns are confiscated. They do not take the suitcase that Jean-Philippe is holding. “You’ll get them back after,” says the man on the right. Ex-Israeli Special Forces. 

Bane inclines his head. Of the weapons in his arsenal, guns have always been the least important.

The man within is almost as large as Bane, though his bulk is a matter of fat rather than muscle. He sits with massive dignity behind a desk, fingers moving with surprising delicacy over the keyboard of an open laptop. Here, too, there are guards. Two of them, near twins of the ones outside in dress and professionalism.

“Do you have it?” asks the man, whose name is Marco, not looking up from a beady-eyed study of the screen.

 _“Yes,”_ Bane says. He nods to Jean-Philippe, who steps forward and lays the briefcase he is holding on the desk.

Marco watches without comment as Jean-Philippe presses his finger to the small pad on its rim, waiting for the scan to process his identity. With a small, vacuum-broken hiss, the case pops open. Mist foams over its lip; without flourish, Jean-Philippe opens the lid wide to show the tiny vials inside.

Their buyer picks one up with a passing glance at Bane for permission, and turns it carefully in his hand to read the serial numbers engraved on the side.

“Good,” he says with satisfaction.

 _“And you?”_ Bane asks.

It is Marco’s turn to nod now, though it is a gesture meant for himself rather than any other. He replaces the vial in the case and pushes it away, gesturing to one of his men as he redistributes his bulk from the chair to his feet. One of the bodyguards comes forward with a briefcase of similar size, and begins the task of transferring the delivery into their own container.

“As agreed,” says Marco, opening one side of his suit top -- the jut of a gun and holster is visible around the creased blue shirt -- to draw a thin white envelope from inside. He passes it to Bane, who rips it open with a finger, while the other bodyguard hands Jean-Philippe a small attache case.

The neatly printed list inside the envelope makes Bane smile.

 _“Thank you,”_ he says, politely, and tucks it into the inner lining of his harness.

“Thank _you_ ,” Marco says with a deep hum of pleasure under his voice. “It has been a very profitable relationship.”

The bodyguard, done with his transfer, snaps the suitcase closed and heads out of the room through a different door. Bane watches him go with sardonic amusement.

“Would you be available if the possibility of further business opportunities comes up?” Marco asks, reaching for a heavy sheepskin-lined coat hanging from a hook on the wall.

Bane steps aside from the entrance he came in by, hearing quiet thuds from beyond the wood paneling. _“I think the occasion will not arise_.”

The door swings open; in its frame stands the blond woman, the white of her jacket speckled with red. In one upraised hand, she carries a gun. Her shots are smooth, professional; Bane appreciates the economy of motion with which she puts a bullet through the heart of the remaining bodyguard, then through Marco’s chest before he is done snatching out his gun. Two dead in less than two seconds. 

The gun swings to bear on Bane’s chest. Behind him, he can sense Jean-Philippe stiff with tension.

 _“Impressive,”_ Bane says to the cold blue eyes behind the gun.

“I’ve had years of practice,” says the woman in a cultured British accent, a far cry from the flat American one she affected outside. Without the affectation of drunken harlot, she is possessed of a quietly deadly elegance: shades of Talia, though older. Her eyes smile, though the gun does not waver. “I hope you didn’t take my behavior outside amiss. I’m afraid I rather took liberties.”

__

_“Not at all,”_ Bane says politely.

“If you don’t mind,” she says, with a nod to Jean-Philippe behind Bane.

Jean-Philippe doesn’t move until Bane tips his head in a gesture of permission. His face unreadable, his stride stiff with challenge, Jean-Philippe steps forward to put the attache case down. The woman crooks a finger; the Frenchman pushes the case with his foot, sending it sliding across the wood floor towards her.

She bends to pick it up, her aim still fixed and certain on Bane’s chest.

“The delivery?” she asks.

Bane glances towards the other door, aware that her gaze does not follow his.

“Thank you. You aren’t going to be difficult about this, are you, dear?”

 _“Business is business,”_ Bane says with a lurking smile.

“Like the old song says. Although,” says the woman with an answering, slightly wicked one of her own, “it’s a pity. If I were ten years younger--”

He estimates her age at the farther side of sixty, but he cannot deny the attraction of either fight or fuck with this dangerous, charming woman. _“Indeed_ ,” he says.

“Do give Talia all my love?” 

_“Of course.”_

With a final, genteel curve of lips, better suited for a garden party than a killing ground, the woman known as Victoria slips through the other door with the light foot of a rumor, the lack of urgency in her step a sign -- even if the fact she engaged in conversation were not -- that she has a team distributed across the exit routes of the building.

Left behind, Bane chuckles quietly and steps over Marco’s body to inspect the coat hanging on the hook. It is large enough for him; his own is growing worn. He picks it up, considers the soft lining and thick weight of it, then shrugs out of his own to put it on. It fits, and with better length than his old one. He raises an eyebrow and decides to keep it.

“Bane?” asks Jean-Philippe, quizzical.

 _“Come,”_ he tells Jean-Philippe, amusement and satisfaction still riding high. _“We have what we came for. Our brothers wait.”_

 

 _+1_.

 

It has come to this. 

 _"I think not,"_ Bane says, his hands closing around the worn lapels of his jacket as he stares down at his employer of the moment.

"Services rendered," says Montiguez, his eyes gleaming with more than simple avarice. "I'm expanding the contract."

_"It is not a contract that I have agreed to."_

__

"I don't think you understand," Montiguez says with genial hostility. Bane does not need to see them to know that guns are being pointed at him by bodyguards across the room, and fingers are curling around triggers. "I'm not _asking_ you."

The room is a large one, not the largest in the villa but one of the better secured ones in the labyrinth of the compound. Montiguez sprawls loose-limbed and casual across black leather couches, unattractively dressed in skin-tight white pants and an open baby blue shirt. Bane regards the _capo_ without comment. He is a dark, lean, vicious mink of a man, a scavenger when he must be; a predator otherwise. More formidable men have risen to lead the cartel before, but Montiguez is the one who has managed to stay at the top. He is not a man to take lightly among the _Narcotraficantes_. 

Not even when one is a member of the League of Shadows. 

Their relationship has been, by the standards of such things, friendly until now. That Montiguez would choose to jeopardize it for so inconsequential a thing -- involving neither money, nor long-term power, nor security -- speaks of an instability in the man that Bane had not anticipated. The _capo’s_ tastes to date have been for young boys and women, few of which survive the encounter.

“This could be interesting,” Montiguez says in lazy accents, his eyes narrowing on Bane’s mask. “Do you never take that off? I wonder if you are as ugly beneath as they say you are.”

 _"To what purpose do you want this?"_   Bane asks out of curiosity, ignoring the question.

"Because I am Montiguez," says the _capo_. He shows his teeth in a smile that is edged with malice, and looks Bane up and down with the slow, proprietary covetousness that is the language of bordellos and prison yards. "What I want, I get. Think of it as business, if it makes you feel better."

_"It is not a business in which I engage."_

__

"A fastidious mercenary," Montiguez sneers, and pulls himself out of the couch to stand. His eyes narrow unpleasantly. "You can engage or not engage for all I care. It doesn’t matter to me.”

It is an almost a trivial point, a concession that Bane has made before for less profitable reasons, though one might question whether continued existence could be considered a profit at all. Sadism, he understands. The desire to dominate or humiliate, likewise. To value that need above self-preservation, from a man who has made a career out of survival, he does not. It is uncharacteristic of Montiguez. Bane is intrigued.

 _“You would incur my enmity,”_ he says. _“You would make an enemy of more than one man.”_

“The _League of Shadows_ ,” Montiguez says. Bane recognizes satisfaction in the slow curl of the _capo’s_ mouth. And yet, Montiguez is aware of the League’s reach -- if not the full extent of it, at least that it is longer than his. It was the League that put him where he was; but he has never said its name aloud before. Has never even betrayed that he is aware of its existence, beyond the fiction of Bane’s mercenary brotherhood.

His intel is getting better. Bane makes a note of that, and considers his reply _. “The League of Shadows,”_ he concedes at last.

Something ugly and smug pours into Montiguez’s voice. “You don’t run the League, my friend.”

Ah.

Ra’s al Ghul. 

The obvious, simplistic explanation is that Montiguez is serving Ra’s al Ghul’s ends in some way. Is it a test of loyalty? No. Ra’s is a subtle man, but such tests would not be done at a remove, in so puerile and petty a way. His tests would be the kind that harrow a man’s soul, or suck the marrow from his bones. They would not be so paltry as animal rutting or simple pain. 

If he wanted Bane dead, it would be with a knife in the dark or a sword in his heart; his teachers at the temple still outmatch him -- he came too late to the practice of their arts to ever supplant them -- and they belong to Ra’s. Neither death nor a judgment of his faith, then. Humiliation or a salutary lesson is likewise unlikely. Ra’s knows where Bane’s pride lives, and it is not housed in the triviality of flesh.

So, not done by Ra’s’s will. This is being done against or in despite of him. Which returns Bane again to the uncharacteristic recklessness of such an act.

Bane raises an eyebrow. _“You think to get the attention of Ra’s al Ghul in such a fashion?”_

“I think I’ll send the leader of your League a message,” Montiguez says, drawing a small knife out of his pocket to butterfly it open. He reaches out with it, tracing a long, red scratch across Bane’s arm. Bane does not move. “Normally I would just kill you and send your head, but you’ve done good work for me in the past. Talent like that’s hard to find. You can consider that a personal favor, if you like.”

 _“A message that you are pitting yourself against the League,”_ Bane clarifies, the slight rise to the last of the sentence making it almost a question.

“A message that I’m on his side.”

Bane smiles. Wheels within wheels. Not Ra’s al Ghul, then, but one of the men assigned to him for this mission, who is attempting to curry favor with Ra’s through a means too crass for it to have been done with their leader’s knowledge. The question is only what Bane will do about it. Kill the poisoned tongue that works against him, certain. Kill its puppet as well? Perhaps, but he can still be of use to them.

 _“You place your trust in false advisors,”_ Bane says kindly. _“For the sake of your service to us, I give you one chance to reconsider what you ask.”_

Montiguez’s knife explores the opening at his collar, where leather and fabric expose skin. Metal pricks, drawing blood. “And I’ll give you one chance to do this the easy way,” he says, before smiling viciously. “You won’t like the hard way. I don’t _have_ to send you back to him in one piece, after all.”

Doubtless it is a threat that has worked for Montiguez before. He has an unsavory reputation, even by Bane’s standards. 

Bane is distantly exasperated. Seven men he counted when he entered, excepting Montiguez. One of them belongs to him. Raolo could account for three; Bane himself could easily kill the others, and the _capo_. However, the League would need to put a new man in Montiguez’s place and plant a new operative, and there would be disruption in the cartel’s functions while the reins of power were reclaimed. 

The pragmatic act would be to acquiesce to Montiguez’s trivial demand. The attempt at an insult to Bane would be meaningless to himself and equally meaningless to Ra’s; as a message to the leader of the League, it would convey the crudity and the limitations of Montiguez’s mind rather than any real attempt at alliance. Bane has taken injury before, and has little worry that he could kill Montiguez before he did anything irreparable. 

He is about to shrug, conceding without the bother wasting his breath, when the sense of a familiar presence stops him. The prickle of danger. The warmth of pleasure. Surprise that it is here, on this continent, at all.

“I think not,” says Talia al Ghul from the doorway, her voice the cool draft of death.

Montiguez’s gaze jerks to her past Bane’s bulk, his eyes flattening in shock and hot annoyance; several of the bodyguards turn their weapons on her as well, before identifying her as a woman and thus a lesser threat.

_Fools._

Bane does not move. His eyes darken towards a smile.

“What--” begins Montiguez, sharply.

“No man touches Bane where I do not will it,” Talia says. “No woman, either.”

“How did you get in here?” Montiguez demands with the first slurring touch of fury. “Whoever let you in is dead. I will kill them myself.”

“I go where I choose.” Bane feels her passage across the room, rather than hears it; he turns his gaze as she comes to stand at his side, her glance meeting his in a promise and caress. “I choose here, by _him_.”

Hard and vengeful, Montiguez’s gaze rakes across Talia, insulting her in a disparaging calculation of her attributes. “Whoever you are, woman, you’ve walked into the wrong _villa_. I’ll have you after him. And then I’ll kill you.”

Talia says with icy contempt, “You may try.” Her face turns up to Bane; her fingers lift to trail a gentle touch across his mask. “Beloved,” she murmurs.

Bane goes to one knee before her. _“My heart,”_ he says with deep irony. His eyes ask a question of her. 

“Who _are_ you?” Montiguez demands.

It is Bane who answers, his head bowing beneath her hand in the abasement of a servant. Of a slave. “ _She is Talia. The daughter of Ra’s al Ghul, who sits at his right hand and commands the legions of the League._ ”

From the corner of his eye, Bane sees Montiguez freeze; recognizes the stiffness of shock in his face. 

Beneath half-lowered eyelids, Talia’s eyes laughs silently back down at Bane. His Talia. His heart. “Bane is mine,” she says, her face turned down to him, her words meant for Montiguez. “I give him where I will, as I will. But he is still mine. You may debate the matter with Ra’s, if you wish -- but I advise against it. A message you choose to give through Bane is one that comes to me.” 

Her gaze turns back to Montiguez. Her smile, too, though it flattens and sharpens as it rises, slicing the very air as it goes. “I am not so forgiving as my father.”

The _capo’s_ hands clench, thumbs sliding nervously across white knuckles. By now, Bane calculates, Montiguez’s slower wits will have realized that Talia’s presence means his outer security is either disabled or dead, and if not, that they belong to the League of Shadows. If they are dead, it was done quietly and quickly enough that they none of them were able to contact him to alert him of her presence. If they are League, then he is surrounded and has no avenue of escape. Paranoia will be leaving fingerprints in his chest.

“A misunderstanding,” Montiguez says after a long, tense moment. The hand carrying the blade drops heavily to his side. He smiles, an expression that leaves his eyes cold and angry. “I must have received ... inaccurate information.”

“You have,” Talia says, inclining her head with regal condescension. “But I am not so rude as to snatch away your pleasure and leave nothing in its place.”

Bane rises, obedient to the slight pressure of Talia’s fingers on his chin. It is an expedient fiction, this subservience, the best kind of lie; one that bears in the kernel of the truth, enough to almost be no lie at all. The doorway is filled again with the silhouette of bodies. Morten and Sufi, his men, dragging between them a slim, delicate-featured youth in a white linen shirt and cargo pants. The clothes are somewhat rumpled now, streaked with red. 

Miguel. Montiguez’s favorite nephew. The _capo_ curses sharply.

Talia’s smile curls more cruelly. “I give you a gift, my friend,” she says. “The Sinaloa covet your territory. If you do not choose to join them, they will rely on treachery to remove you.”

Montiguez draws himself up, face whitening under the darkness of his tan. Morten and Sufi haul their limp burden past Talia and dump him at the _capo’s_ feet. 

“A fair exchange,” Montiguez says in a harsh voice, staring down at the sprawled, unmoving body. Only the barest movement betrays that the young man is breathing at all. The _capo’s_ fingers strain in their clench around the knife’s hilt. 

Talia does not say farewell. She glances at their man in Montiguez’s personal guard; he lowers his gun and steps forward to join her, prompting another angry flare of Montiguez’s eyes. They follow her when she leaves, the four of them:  dogs of war at her heels. Montiguez’s security outside is dead, their bodies broken and limp around the entrance. Three more men fall in with them as they leave the villa, dressed in the uniform Montiguez has his men affect; their cover lost, they are more use to the League alive than dead. 

Bane smiles.

 _“It was a wasteful gesture,”_ he observes without reproach to Talia later, when they are in their plane and knifing high over Oaxaca. _“Four embedded positions sacrificed, an enemy made and left alive:  to what purpose?”_

“Is it not enough that you need not suffer his advances?”

 _“Sentiment.”_ Bane chuckles quietly in his throat. _“You are becoming a woman, my Talia.”_

Her eyes flash, more deadly in their irritation than ever Montiguez’s could ever have been in his vengeance. “He will not survive the week,” she says. “He will replace the men we have killed from the farms nearest to him, and the Sinaloa’s men will be among them.”

_“They will kill him and put in their own man, who will join their cartel.”_

Talia inclines her head. 

Bane points out, _“They are not ours as Montiguez was. And you have given their agent to him.”_

“No. I have given him his nephew, and warned him against the Sinaloa cartel. They want his territory. It is nothing he does not already know. We desire the Sinaloa’s routes into the United States. They are now in our debt.”

__

_“This is Ra’s al Ghul’s planning?”_

“Possession of the Sinaloa’s network is Ra’s al Ghul’s _desire_.” 

 _“And yours?”_ She was in Zimbabwe only a week ago, with no intent to come to Mexico.

“Mine,” Talia says, then reaches to touch her fingers to his temple. Her smile warms him, rueful. “You know me too well.”

Bane aspirates a quiet chuckle. _“Your oldest friend.”_

“My _only_ friend.” Her fingers trace the line of his brow, the hollow of his eye socket, cool and light across his skin in a loving, feather-light caress. 

He warns, _“Your father is wary of me. If his tools are moving against me of their own volition, he has made his feelings clear.”_

“You are no mewling man of God, to wait tamely for his knives.”

 _“It is only a matter of time, daughter of Ra’s al Ghul_.”

Talia says nothing, though her eyes glitter.

 _“I will submit to his knife, if you wish it. What is your will?”_ Bane asks gently.

Her low voice is beautiful, the dream of a life altogether different than the one that is theirs. “I was born in the pit, my friend,” Talia says. “My life is yours. If he raises his hand against you, he raises it against me.”

 _“You would sacrifice what you have gained, for a childhood best forgotten?”_ Bane’s hand touches the mask that is his shield and his sacrifice. The fangs of it, hard against his fingers, are cool with the poison that flows like mist within them. He detaches one, feeling the immediate, prickling nibble of pain waking to its absence.

Her fingers rise as his fall away, tenderly repairing the fault; surcease from pain at her hands, by her desire. It is what they have, the gift they share between them. She breathes, “You, who protected me when I was a child. Should I not do the same, when the opportunity arises?”

 _“Sentiment,”_ Bane says again, but this time without mockery.

Talia’s eyes darken. “For you, my heart, I would burn down the world.”

He catches her fingers in his hand. He would kiss them if he could. His Talia. His daughter. His sister. His friend. His beloved.

 _“For you, my heart,_ _I would burn with it_.” 

 


End file.
